Bangladesh centre plans lab to detect bird flu

DHAKA, July 11 (Reuters) An international research centre for infectious diseases said today it was planning to open a laboratory in Bangladesh to detect outbreaks of avian flu independently in case of any outbreak.

In the long run the laboratory will put efforts to develop low-cost vaccine to protect poultry from avian flu.

No case of bird flu has been reported in Bangladesh, but health officials have said the country is potentially at risk after outbreaks in neighbouring India and Myanmar.

''The laboratory will help develop local expertise to detect avian flue independently in case of an outbreak of the flu,'' said David A Sack, executive director of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research.

''In the long run it will try to develop low-cost medicines to protect poultry from avian flu or any other unknown epidemic, after conducting surveillance among chickens, ducks and humans,'' he said.

''The laboratory will be set up in the next one year with collaboration of the US Department of Health Services,'' Sack told Reuters.

India's top animal disease research laboratory said this week it was close to developing its own vaccine against avian flu in poultry, with final phase trials showing 90 per cent success.

Its experimental vaccine will target the H5N1 strain of the virus that has spread rapidly through poultry flocks in Europe, Asia and Africa and killed 131 people across the world since 2003.

Vietnam, where 42 people have died of bird flu, is also developing its own vaccine to replace ones imported from China.

Countries like Thailand which have also had human fatalities plan to test bird flu vaccines on humans while global drug makers like GlaxoSmithKline Plc are rushing to develop a vaccine to protect humans.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that could be easily passed among people, triggering a pandemic.

Bangladesh has banned poultry imports from 25 bird flu-hit countries, including India, tightened its borders and seized and destroyed thousands of poultry birds smuggled from India.

REUTERS SY RN2026